Trump Supporters Almost Assaulted My 12-year-Old Autistic Son Because He Was Wearing a Mask

This is Trump's America.

Editor’s note: In light of Tucker Carlson telling his audience to harass people wearing masks, we are republishing this Members Only article for free. Given the size of Carlson’s audience, this is extremely worrying and could potentially lead to violence and greater spread of the virus. The article below is a real world description of what can happen when mask wearing is politicized.

by Justin Rosario

My wife regularly gets annoyed with me because I do two things that get on her nerves on a fairly consistent basis: 1. I know what she’s thinking way more often than she’s comfortable with, and 2. Things I tell her are going to happen do, more frequently than not.

You would think the first thing would be awesome. After all, a common complaint among women is that their significant other doesn’t understand them. But after 23 years together, I’m way better at reading her than she is at reading me and it vexes her to no end. Also, when I’m really on the ball, she feels like I’m reading her mind and the feeling of exposure is aggravating.

The second is a little more complicated. Once I started paying very close attention to politics, it became very easy to predict certain things that would affect us. Recurring government shutdowns? Yeah, we knew that was coming and we prepared for them as best we could, learning with each shutdown. 

Remember, Debbie is the primary breadwinner and a government worker. We never know if a particular shutdown is going to affect her but we always prepare like it will. Even so, the long one at the beginning of 2019 was difficult. I can’t even imagine what people who were blindsided went through.

Another example of my not-so-amazing divination skills was back in 2016. I told Debbie that antisemitism was going to, you’ll forgive the expression, spread like a plague when Trump was elected. Within a year, Nazis marched in Charlottesville, a woman was murdered, and a notorious neo-Nazi had moved into our small city to be closer to the centers of power in Washington DC.

I also told her that Covid-19 was going to be the kind of disease you see in the movies and that we needed to stock up before people panicked and stripped the stores bare.

Each time, I was met with skepticism and then mounting irritation as my prediction came to pass. You would think she would be more trusting by now but I think she simply doesn’t want to acknowledge how fucking awful people can be.

Which is why she didn’t really believe me when I told her a few weeks ago that Trump humpers were going to start harassing people for wearing masks.

“I Hate When You Are Right”

Most days, Debbie takes the kids down to the creek behind our apartment for 20 minutes or so. It gets them outside for fresh air and gives me a few minutes of much-needed solitude. While I’m adjusting well to being a full-time stay-at-home parent again, I’m struggling a bit with being around people 24/7. After several years of spending most of the day alone, this has been an abrupt change and a few minutes of peace and quiet are very welcome. 

On this particular day, though, I was out food shopping with Claudia while Debbie took Jordan, Anastasia, and Dominic (the kid across the hall whom we’ve been watching while his parents work) down for some exercise. I was on my way home when I received a text from Debbie: “I hate when you are right.”

I get those texts from time to time and I knew she would explain it to me when I got back. These conversations are usually funny as I fake try not to be fake smug. But this was not one of those conversations.

Turns out that when she and the kids were down on the trail next to the creek, two teens and an adult were coming down the path at the same time. The two teens decided to take offense at Jordan wearing a mask and walked right up to him, demanding to know why he had one on.

Now, autism comes in a lot of different flavors. For some, it’s super obvious at a glance that they’re on the spectrum. But for most, you have to spend some time with them to notice that they’re not neurotypical. Even moderately impacted kids like Jordan don’t immediately present as autistic, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

One of the ways Jordan’s autism manifests itself is that he does not respond to people unless they call him by name. And by “respond,” I mean he does not acknowledge your existence. Not in a mean, dismissive way (that would require Jordan to have a single mean bone in his body, which he does not), but in an almost literal sense. If he does not know you, you’re more or less invisible to him unless you say his name. That’s when he “sees” you and you enter into his world.

So these two little shits were in his face trying to bully him and Jordan didn’t acknowledge them in any way whatsoever. One of them was insulted by this and said, “Do you speak English?!” Jordan continued to not respond and the two teens realized that Jordan was not exactly ignoring them so much as not responding at all. Presumably, it occurred to them that it wouldn’t be any fun if they couldn’t provoke a reaction and they left.

This happened quickly enough that Debbie, who was more focused on Dominic playing by the water, didn’t have time to react.

It may strike you as odd that two teens were picking on a 12-year-old but Jordan is, like his father, a giant. He’s already 5’9” and he just turned 12 last month. He looks old enough to be in high school and since he was a “teen” with his mother, he was a perfect target. The adult they were with didn’t say a word about their behavior which means they had his tacit, if not explicit, approval to act like assholes.

Gotta teach’em to hate young so they’ll vote Republican for their entire lives, right? It doesn’t take much to imagine their father telling them that wearing a mask is “faggy” and that “real men” ain’t afraid of no virus like those liberal pussies.

This happened in deep deep blue North Virginia which is the exact opposite of Trump country. And yet, we still couldn’t escape the sheer stupidity of the MAGA Moron Mob.

So Now What?

Debbie is badly rattled. We live in a heavy immigrant community in one of the safest cities in the country. We’re supposed to be very far away from this MAGA crap. We have enough problems worrying about a deadly virus, we shouldn’t have to worry about viral stupidity.

Fortunately, Anastasia is shrugging it off since she considers Trump supporters to be the lowest form of live to exist. It’s amazing what accurately explaining the stated beliefs of Republicans will do to a child’s opinion of them. At the same time, Jordan is completely oblivious because he would have to understand what bullying even is for it to have an impact (for once, hooray for autism).

I, on the other hand, am furious that a MAGA Moron dared come near my family and harass any of them for wearing a mask. And, yes, I hate that I was right. There is zero satisfaction in assuming the absolute worst in a group of people and having them live down to your expectations every single time. 

It’s even more annoying that I know it would never have happened if I had been there. MAGAs are, for all their swagger and tough talk, absolute cowards. Or did you think they cling to their guns because they actually feel secure in their masculinity?

Still, now I have to escort my wife and kids out in public because Trump supporters are only going to escalate their hostility against people wearing masks. For the moment, it’s verbal harassment but it won’t be long before they move on to pulling masks off of women and children. If there’s a group of them, they may surround a man or two and grab theirs but the initial assaults will overwhelmingly be against women (particularly women of color) and those least likely or able to fight back. 

After that, the actual attacks will begin. I don’t know what will be the trigger, but sooner or later, the sight of people wearing a mask will so enrage Trump supporters that they will be moved to physical violence. My feeling is that this will have to do with how poorly Trump is doing in the polls and the identification of masks with Biden supporters.

Not for nothing, Trump is already pushing the message that “real” Americans don’t wear masks and that divisive rhetoric is only going to intensify as the body count skyrockets going into the Fall. The more people die, the louder the propaganda that it’s all a hoax to undermine Trump will become as the “president” publicly declares the official death toll to be a lie.

So now I go out with Debbie and the kids and I carry an aluminum baseball bat because that’s the world Trump has created. We have two keychains of pepper spray coming in, one for Deb and one for Claudia. They’re not thrilled about it but I can’t be everywhere they go and neither one of them is Xena, Warrior Princess. If a couple of MAGA Morons decide to be violently outraged at their mask, they’re not going to be able to do a whole lot about it. No, we will not be getting a gun because the chances of one of my kids accidentally killing one of us or themselves goes through the roof and that sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

It’s insane that a simple, common-sense precaution to prevent the spread of a deadly disease would cause rage and violence but rage and violence are the only things left to fuel the right wing. It came within inches of touching my family in one of the bluest and safest parts of the country. If you think you’re safe from the insanity of the MAGA Moron Mob, you are not. 

I do not say these things to frighten you. If you follow the news at all, you are already frightened. But being frightened is not the same as seeing what is coming and preparing for it. I knew what was coming and I still wasn’t prepared because I didn't think it could happen here. But it did. It can happen anywhere. Hate and ignorance can flourish everywhere.

I don’t know what being prepared looks like to you but don’t wait.

Read an excerpt from the latest Members Only piece out this week:

MAGAland Is Turning A Dead Terrorist Into A Martyr

The ramifications of this are incredibly dangerous.

Image: a mourner lays an American flag for Ashli Bobbitt. Source: unknown

by Justin Rosario

I do not spend as much time in MAGAland as I used to because, frankly, it’s not conducive to my mental wellbeing. These are deeply disturbed, and therefore disturbing, people. But that doesn’t mean I ignore them. Ignoring them is, if not suicidal, suicide-adjacent.

This is how I found myself poking around MAGA twitter. I was checking to see how they were reacting to the news that the officer who shot and killed the terrorist Ashli Babbitt on 1/6 would not be charged with a crime. I knew it would be demented but it was far worse than I had imagined.

It has become a rallying cry among the faithful that Ashli Babbitt was a patriot murdered by a tyrannical government. They are now turning her into a martyr.

Who Was Ashli Babbit?

I have little interest in who Ashli Babbitt was previous to the storming of the Capitol. She was terrorist and she died a traitor to her country (if you need to know more, have at it). But for the purposes of this article, however, you should be aware that Babbitt was the woman who tried to force her way through a barricaded door into the Speaker’s Lobby.

The lobby is the area right behind the dais at the center of the floor of the House Chamber and there were congresspeople in the room while Babbit tried to get in. Had the terrorists managed to break through the door they would have reached the elected officials they were hunting.

A Capitol police officer shot her to defend the people he was sworn to protect. I’m far from a cop apologist but if this isn’t a justified shooting, the term has no meaning. To MAGAs, however, everything about the Babbitt shooting is suspect. She was a patriot, a hero, and a victim. The fact that a black cop shot her just adds fuel to the fire. MAGAs are really really angry about that part. They can’t stop bringing it up. 

It is common knowledge that Trump supporters live in a fantasy land of white grievance and conspiracies but the mythology they are building is truly insane. And I should know, I spent the last week or so trolling them to see it for myself.

A Trolling We Will Go…

Generally I don’t have the inclination nor the time to go trolling on social media. But when I came across the “Babbitt-as-martyr” meme on twitter, I wanted to see exactly where these deranged lunatics were going with this. And it was pretty bad.

My trolling was very simple. I did a search for #AshliBabbitt and under several dozen posts complaining about her “murder”, I replied “She should have #complied.” The idea, of course, was to trigger the massive hypocrisy and racism of MAGAs who were simultaneously rending their garments over the trial of Derek Chauvin while demanding the blood of the cop who shot Babbitt. 

I would brag about how well this worked but, honestly, it’s like dunking on a 3-year-old. MAGAs are not that bright and it’s really not that hard to get them foaming at the mouth. And foam they did…..

This is an excerpt of today’s Members Only piece. Continue reading here and get a 2 month free trial on a Banter Membership!: